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Kenya: Prisons System Needs Urgent Changes
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
OPINION
5 May 2008
Posted to the web 5 May 2008
Norman Mudibo
The pathetic living conditions the custodians of our country's correctional institutions have been subjected to is appalling.
How can you squeeze grown ups with their children in little shacks partitioned by tattered pieces of cloth?
This shows how we regard those tasked with the well being of our prison service. You cannot expect quality service from such a crucial segment of our prison system with the kind of squalor that is their lifestyle.
Some of our leaders behave like the proverbial ostrich and only act when things are out of hand.
It does not help to intimidate a genuinely aggrieved people whose cries have often fallen on deaf ears. Likewise, it is a self defeatist move to engage in useless blame games instead of fixing the problem as fast as possible.
We knew the difficulties our prison warders encounter, but chose to look the other way even as we lavishly engaged in piecemeal, somewhat populist reforms.
Setting up a committee to investigate the obvious is rather preposterous, time wasting and an affront on the victims' intelligence.
Investigations in this country have been known to be public relations gimmick, time wasting and avenues to enrich a few.
Every year, money that would have been used to improve the welfare of prison guards is returned to Treasury.
The much hyped prison reforms were just another demonstration of how skewed and piecemeal, our reform agenda has become.
Why are we pretending that the conditions the warders are living in and their poor pay are a sudden occurrence?
The Vice- President, Mr Kalonzo Musyoka, just did not get it.
You cannot form an inquiry, and go ahead to make embarrassing announcement before consulting the intended appointees- people who are perceived as having been part of the problem.
Worth noting too is that what ails the correctional system in this country is well known through numerous researches whose diagnosis and recommendations are well documented.
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Why then waste the meagre resources to show the public that you are doing something?
What the correctional system in this country requires is wide ranging reforms to address specifically the welfare of the much neglected prison warders and the institutional capacity of the prison department.
Mudibo is a media manager at Tell-EM Public Relations Ltd.
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